Surprise Excommunication

In my current English, early, hard campaign I have just been excommunicated without warning. I have had a long running war with the HRE - for most of the game and it is now about 1190. This all stems from them attacking me in Flanders when they (the HRE) had a civil and some rebels attacked me in Flanders. I threw them back and took a couple of provinces to stabilise my borders. I was warned about possible excommunication and decided to stop attacking. Also Novogrod had got very strong and a few HRE provinces between them and me looked a good idea. Anyway, I wasn't excommunicated. Since then I have had sucessful Crusades, conquered all of Islam virtually single handed. About 2 or 3 years ago while I was off in the Middle East and the Spanish came back, the HRE attacked a couple of my French provinces. I have just sorted them out and, without warning was excommunicated, apparently for defending my provinces!! :furious3:

This has given me the opportunity to finish off the Germans - I have the last army and their King besieged and there is hardly a Catholic power left to talk about - I think the Italians are excommed as they are at war with the Pope - as I have defeated the French and Spanish and the HRE are about to disappear. What's more I have an active Crusade which is about to take its objective as my other forces have taken it any way. It is all a bit puzzling as the King who the original edict was against died about 20 years ago - any body got any ideas? - it shouldn't be too much of a problem, just the odd rebellion to put down, but at another time, it would have been disaster. for the record, I am using 1.1 MTW currently - VI goes on when I finish the current campaign. ~:cheers: